Realism and Idealism - Conflicting perceptions

These two modes of perceiving world politics were never uniquely American
in precept or experience. Western political thought always recognized the
tension between realist and idealist views toward the actions of
governments in both domestic and international transactions. The stark
realism of Niccolò Machiavelli stood in profound opposition to the
dominant Christian teachings that favored ethical constraints upon rulers.
In the eighteenth century, doctrines of
raison d'état
contended with Enlightenment doctrines propounded by philosophers who
objected to such practices of monarchical statecraft as mercantilism,
balance-of-power politics, and the pursuit of dynastic goals at the
expense of peace and human welfare.

While the American clash between realism and idealism owes an intellectual
debt to antecedent European thought, it was in the United States that both
doctrines were fully established, in theory and in practice. Whereas in
continental Europe, utopian idealism remained excluded from the realm of
practice, in the United States it became a recurrent, contrapuntal theme
of statesmen and politicians, commentators and theorists. What underlay
the conflicting presumptions regarding the requirements and possibilities
of external action was the anarchical nature of the international
environment. Whereas governmental structures within established countries
assured some degree of order and security, the absence of international
authority compelled individual countries to fend for themselves, relying
on their own capacities to coexist in what social contract theorists
termed a state of nature. Realists and idealists disagreed totally over
the capacity of human society, and especially international politics, to
eliminate the vagaries of existence in an anarchic state system.

Realists, recognizing no genuine alternative to coexistence in an
anarchical world of individual sovereign nations, accepted the modern
state system as a necessity. They would defend the country's
interests by following the rules of diplomacy and war as propounded by a
host of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century writers and statesmen. These
rules of conduct were not designed to prevent conflict and war, but rather
to mitigate their effects and thereby assure the survival of states. For
realists, moreover, war was not an aberration, but a condition sometimes
unavoidable, a contingency for which to prepare, but also, when possible,
to deter by force or accommodation. Wars, they knew, were generally the
only means available for changing unwanted political or territorial
conditions. Realists thus accepted power politics as a natural phenomenon
of international life, with the concomitant reliance on armies and navies,
secret diplomacy, and alliances. Asserting the primacy of national over
individual interests, they viewed the universal norms governing human
rights as conditional when they threatened the national welfare. Realists
observed the essential truth that nations existed successfully amid the
world's anarchy. The evidence lay in the precedence of peace over
war, as well as the continued material advancement in human affairs.

Idealists viewed the international system, with its accoutrements of
conflict and war, as not only deeply flawed but also capable of
melioration, if not total cure. For them, international strife was the
unnecessary and reprehensible product of outmoded forms of human
organization, both in the internal structuring of states and in their
international practices. Idealists saw in the trappings of power politics
little but ambition, opportunism, deception, and impositions. Whereas
realist doctrine focused on national interests and security, idealist
concerns looked to individual welfare and the general interests of
humanity. Idealists presumed that the objective validity and authority of
universal norms, laws, and principles could and should apply to
international as well as domestic affairs.

Realists and idealists disagreed fundamentally on the primary determinants
of state behavior in international politics. For realists, external
factors defined the options available to policy-makers. Those options were
uncertain and elusive, requiring preparedness as well as caution.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson once remarked: "The future is
unpredictable. Only one thing—the unexpected—can be
reasonably anticipated…. The part of wisdom is to be prepared for
what may happen, rather than to base our course upon faith in what should
happen." The German historian Leopold von Ranke formulated this
view in terms congenial to American realists. The dangers and
uncertainties of international life, he wrote, not only established the
primacy of foreign affairs but also dictated the precedence of security
interests over domestic concerns. While cognizant of the historical
vicissitudes in national fortunes, realists nevertheless saw constancy in
the essential traits and behavior of nations. Policies might vary with
regimes, but fundamental interests, once established, tended to remain
consistent.

Idealists, on the contrary, tended to view the sources of external state
action as residing in internal political processes, based largely on
political structures, the distribution of political power, and the
ambitions of ruling elites. Involvements abroad reflected not external
necessity, but internal choice. To idealists, different forms of
government led to different modes of foreign policy. Autocratic states,
some idealists presumed, too readily threatened the cause of humanity by
placing demands on individuals that were sharply at odds with private
conscience. By ordering men into mortal combat with other members of the
human race, they shattered the peace and defied the civilized norms of
human conduct. Authentic republics did not wage aggressive wars, nor did
free peoples impose imperial control over others.

However apparent the wellsprings of aggressive national behavior, realists
accepted limits on both their intentions and their power to interfere.
They recognized the barriers that national sovereignty placed on meliorist
efforts to alter the political structures and domestic decisions of other
countries. Idealists, as children of the Enlightenment, expected more of
themselves and society. For them, the world was not hopelessly corrupt,
but could, through proper leadership and motivation, advance morally and
politically. This optimistic view of the world became endemic to the
idealists' presumptions of human progress and the concomitant
conviction that the United States, because of the superiority of its
institutions, was ideally constituted to lead the world toward an
improving future. The belief that institutional and moral superiority
distinguished the United States from other countries found its central
expression in the concept of "exceptionalism." This assigned
to American suppositions of exceptional virtue the imperative of
exceptional obligation to serve the peace and improve the human condition.